1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a sheet material feeding device which is applied to a copier, facsimile, and printer, separates one sheet from a sheet bundle having plural stacked sheets such as sheets of recording paper and OHP sheet material, and feeds the one sheet in a predetermined conveying-out direction.
2. Related Art
In general, an image forming apparatus such as a printer, copier, and facsimile is provided with a sheet material feeding device as part of the apparatus body in order to automatically feed a sheet material as a recording medium such as recording paper and an OHP sheet to an image formation part or the sheet material feeding device can be added as an option unit (sheet material feeding unit). Such a sheet material feeding device has a sheet feeding cassette that can house a sheet bundle having plural stacked sheets and is removably fitted in the body part of the apparatus, and a separating and sheet feeding mechanism that separates one sheet from the sheet bundle housed in the sheet feeding unit and conveys it out from within the sheet feeding cassette. In the sheet material feeding device, the separating and sheet feeding mechanism separates one sheet from the sheet feeding cassette in synchronization with the start of image formation of the image formation part of the image forming apparatus and conveys the one sheet out from within the sheet feeding cassette to the conveying path of the sheet material. The sheet material is automatically fed through the conveying path to the image formation part to form an image on the sheet material.